Converting RGB (or CMYK) JPG to two spot colours 1

[Eggles]

A clent sent me the only version he possessed of his logo as an 300 dpi RGB JPG. He wants new busines cards to be printed in just the two colours of his logo (a blue and a yellow). I was able to work out the PMS colours the original designer had used by referring to a pantone swatch book, and I have Photoshop 7.

My problem is, I have never worked in spot colours in Photoshop, except for duotones, which add the spot colours to the whole of the image. I want to add spot colours to just the portions of the image containing those colours. The two coloured areas are fairly well defined and I can select them using the magic wand, and then I don't really know what to do. After reading a couple of books (not very advanced) and some websites and forums, I think I am supposed to do the following:

Select one of my coloured areas with the magic wand in the original image. Save the selection. Double click an alpha channel in the Channels palette and choose Spot Colour. Click the colour swatch, click Custom and specify my pantone colour. OK out.

Do I then just load my selection into that channel? Do I delete the R, G and B channels? And how do I save in the 'DCS' format that I have been advised to? It was not an option under either 'save as' or 'export'? I think I am totally lost.

 

[barehug]

DCS is an *.eps type, you should be able to save as a Photoshop DCS 2.0 .eps.

If the areas are sharply defined it may be preferable to recreate the file in Illustrator(if you need it larger as well as a business card). You could convert the selections to paths and export these to Illustrator to shorten the recreation process.

I don't know enough about this file type to help you much, maybe someone else?

Moe: It could have been a real ugly situation, but luckily I managed to shoot him in the spine.

 

[Eggles]

Barehug

Thanks for your reply. I have considered recreating the logo in Illustrator (I know how to use the Pen Tool quite well) but the time restraints precluded this. I also have never gone the route selections>paths>AI - I tried but nothing came in when I tried opening the AI file. Obviously I also missed a step somewhere there too.

Who would have thought this would prove to be so difficult?

 

[barehug]

The paths are not stroked when importing to AI, try select all and apply a stroke.

Also when converting selections to paths hold down ALT when clicking the 'make work path from selection' it will change the tolerance of the conversion - the lower the tolerance, the more accurate to the selection/more anchor points in the path.

Moe: It could have been a real ugly situation, but luckily I managed to shoot him in the spine.

 

[Eggles]

Thank you, barehug!!!

It was this tip:

"You could convert the selections to paths and export these to Illustrator to shorten the recreation process".

and then this one:

"The paths are not stroked when importing to AI, try select all and apply a stroke."

which allowed me to finally do what I wanted.

No more mucking around with channels in PS - which I still don't understand.

Fortunately, the blue coloured areas were easy enough to select with the magic wand. I then converted these to paths, brought them into AI and after selecting all, added strokes. I was then able to select individual paths to add the appropriate fills and then remove the strokes.

One thing I still don't understand is why both the blue AND the yellow paths were selected - I thought I would have to bring each one into AI separately and then somehow combine them. But I won't worry about the mystery behind that one just for now.

Thank you again for pointing me in the right direction.

 

[barehug]

With just two defined areas of colour try the color range tool (Select>Color Range).

Moe: It could have been a real ugly situation, but luckily I managed to shoot him in the spine.

 

[Eggles]

>>With just two defined areas of colour try the color range tool (Select>Color Range). <<

Did that but then didn't know where to go.

 

[barehug]

>>..>>With just two defined areas of colour try the color range tool (Select>Color Range). <<..<<

use the eyedropper that appears with the window to select one of the colours in the image. Adjust fuzziness to select colours similar to the colour. The white areas (in the Black box in the Color Range dialogue) will show you what bparts are selected to select and deselect more colours use the + & - tools in the dialogue.

In the image, the parts selected will be covered by the masking colour.

When you press OK, the colours will be selected.

Moe: It could have been a real ugly situation, but luckily I managed to shoot him in the spine.